Old City Hall is indeed threatened. Seismically unsafe, the two-story building is now mostly vacant, its fate in limbo, city officials said.

The school district, which has used the building since the 1970s, recently moved out, and plans to relocate the school board meetings, as well.

That just leaves the Berkeley City Council, rent board and a few other city commissions, which meet a few nights per month in the upstairs meeting chambers.

The once-bustling neoclassical building sits quietly crumbling. Paint is peeling, plaster is chipping, mold creeps up the walls.

But fixing the fading beauty will not be cheap. The cost of seismic upgrades and renovation tops $30 million, according to city officials, which neither the city nor the voters appear willing to spend. Voters in 2002 rejected a bond to get the project started.

"'Demolition by neglect' is the term we use," said Pat Edwards, a neighbor who's fighting to see the building either refurbished for city use or leased to a nonprofit like the Berkeley Historical Society. "You'd think with all the money in Berkeley, someone would figure out a way to save this building."

Old City Hall, at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Center Street, is among the grandest buildings in town. It was built just outside downtown, on the banks of Strawberry Creek, at a time when optimistic cities across the country were erecting ornate and expensive civic monuments to raise their visibility and morale, Thompson said.

The building was designed by the same architects who built San Francisco City Hall, and shares many of the details, such as the dome, high ceilings and grand staircase.

The site of countless Berkeley historic moments, such as the Vietnam War and Free Speech Movement debates, and more recently the Marine recruiting protests, it's on the National Register of Historic Places and is among the first city-designated landmarks.

But its structural limitations became evident in the 1970s, and the city moved its administrative offices a block away, leasing the building to the school district.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake sealed its fate: The city had to retrofit it or close it. No one in Berkeley, where historic preservation is practically a religion, could bring themselves to close it, so the building just sits.

The City Council last year debated whether to move its meetings to another location, but never took action.

City Councilman Jesse Arreguin, whose district includes Old City Hall, is pushing for the city to find the funds for a renovation. He says he plans to address the issue after the council returns from holiday break.

"The City Council has been meeting there for more than 100 years. It's a part of our history," he said. "It was built by the taxpayers for public use, and we should do what we can to preserve that."

San Francisco and Oakland, which also have century-old city halls that were damaged by the '89 earthquake, each spent millions to upgrade the buildings. Both cities now have immaculately renovated city halls that still serve as the center of public life.

Berkeley can only dream of such a fate. Persuading voters to pay $30 million or more for upgrades is a long shot, Thompson said.

"Berkeley property owners are already taxed to the max," she said. "But this is an important building. It symbolizes Berkeley. It really should remain in public use."